After 10 days of activity we already reached 383Page Fans (and this without paying Facebook Ads that target Fan growth):
In this post I will lift the curtains of the strategy I used to reach this result.

Design “killer” visuals for your cover & profile photo

To grasp the attention of people scrolling their newsfeeds, you need to create extremely attractive visuals. People might even fan your page simply because they love your visuals!

I’m convinced this is what happened in the case of my client ECWT. For our visuals, we decided to combine the very male dominated world of technology with the very female dominated world of needlework. Instead of a logo, we had LaLaLa Toys creating 2 crocheted Social Media “mascots”, called GeekDoll Zohra and GeekDoll Anaïs, each presenting the technology fields of IT and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics):

Interact with a dedicated Personal Profile

The possibilities for interacting with people through a Facebook Fan Page are far more limited than with a Personal Profile, simply because people are more likely to engage with a person than with the logo of an institution or a company. But the person administrating the page is often reluctant to use his or her own Personal Profile to act in the name of the organization.

To solve this, I propose to create a Personal Profile for a Social Media “mascot”[1] – a person-like logo or doll that can act as the Social Media spokesperson of the organization:

Request Friendship to all your Page Fans, but be aware of Facebook’s Security Measures

Once a Personal Profile for your mascot is in place, send a friendship request to each new fan of your page. If you fans can clearly link your mascot with your page, chances are high they will accept the friend request.

Of course, not all your fans will accept your friend requests and it is important to understand the limits of this tactic, because if too many of your friend requests are deleted or received with “I don’t know this person outside Facebook”, you will quickly bump on Facebook’s Security Measures.

So be ready for Facebook’s Security Measures that will basically appear in 3 different forms:

A first warning – do flag “I understand” & click “okay”:

A request to cancel pending friend requests – do cancel those requests:

A message of being blocked for 7 days – once reestablished, refrain from sending out too many friend requests:

Create a snowball effect among the friends of the friends of your mascot

If your Page Fans do accept your friend requests, react with posting a public thank-you message on their timelines [2]. Make sure your message contains a link towards your Fan Page, because Facebook will turn it into your avatar with the title, description, type of organization and number of fans of your Page:

At this point, just wait and cross your fingers for the following snowball effect to take place:

A friend of your friend sees the post, falls in love with the visuals (and with your project) and decides to fan your page.

You send a friend request to this new Page Fan.

This new fan accepts your friend request.

You post your thank-you message on the timeline of this new friend.

A friend of this new friend sees the post, likes it, fans your page, friends with you, etc. etc.

The result? In a short period of time, the same circle of friends will see your public thank-you message appearing several times on their timeline, because many of their common friends are becoming fans of your page and have friended with your mascot.

In the case of ECWT, I saw this snowball effect happening especially with 2 Page Fans (one from Portugal and one from Italy), resulting in a wave of 120 Page Fans coming in during just 1 day – most of them linked to one of those 2 ‘original’ Page Fans. This figure from Facebook Insights clearly shows the “waves” caused by this snowball effect:

[1] Stricly interpretated, Facebook’s name policy would only accept Personal Profiles for “people to use their real identity and their real name” and requires the creation of a Fan Page “to represent a business, brand, pet, idea or organization”. In practice though, there are many organizations, clubs, entities etc. that are operating on Facebook through a Personal Profile.

[2] Be aware you can only post messages on the timeline of your friends if they haven’t changed the default setting of accepting friends to post on their timeline.